She hadn't realized or thought about the preset...she just liked cats. In the previous reality she didn't remember, they had gotten their son a dog...but with no son in this reality....they had a cat named Luna, and adorable and somewhat playful shorthair they'd gotten about a few years earlier.
A progress bar appeared on the screen, "Calculating Necessary Changes, Please Wait" and she decided to get something to drink. Not being very tech savvy, she though that the Chronivac was some sort of simulator...not a reality alteration device.
She spun around in the office chair, preparing to get up. Luna was perched nearby. Suddenly, she leaped down from the cat tower toward the floor. Sherry gaped as she seemed to slow in mid-air...impossibly.
"What the hell?" She said, getting up. She walked around the cat...realizing she was still leaping toward the ground...just very slowly. The digital clock on the wall had also stopped. She made her way over to the window. Cars frozen in the street...the woman across the way watering her plants...frozen. She cursed, and turned. She had to get to the computer to figure this out. It must be that weird program.
She saw the calculation message completing, and a new one appeared that said, "Initiating test before full deployment. Design test beginning." She felt herself slowly rise up off the floor, until she was floating next to her cat, frozen in midair.
"No...stop...abort..." she said. Except the computer didn't have any voice controls. Her shoes were pulled off her feet, landing on the ground below her, then her socks...her dress being pulled up over her head. The damn computer was stripping her. Before long, her clothes were piled up on the floor below her, even her bra and panties...and another item...Luna's collar...the machine had stripped her too.
She struggled, trying to reach the ground, but she just hovered there. "Bill!?" She called. "Anyone?!? Help!!"
Struggling as she was, she didn't notice Luna was growing, doubling in size, then doubling again....till she gave up calling for help, turned and screamed for an entirely different reason at the cat that was as large as she was, still frozen in the leaping position next to her, her front paws extended in front of her. She looked like she had leapt straight out of the jungle.
Luna gradually rotated, until she looked as if she was leaping straight up... And then she started getting bigger again....no, Sherry realized....the room was getting larger....no...she was shrinking. Before long, she was so small, Luna could hold her....if she had hands... Sherry laughed at that thought...somewhat in denial about what she'd asked the Chronivac to do, even now.
Sherry suddenly felt a pressure, as if she had to go to the bathroom...worried she was going to do her business right then and there she turned. But what was coming out was not feces, it was...a tail? Meanwhile, Luna's tail was being sucked back into her body like a retractable cable.
Sherry was therefore, starting to freak out again. But she wasn't becoming a cat....her tail..was she thinking of it as hers now....only had a light fuzz on it, not unlike the hair on a human arm.
Without the tail, Sherry's panties floated up, somehow positioning themselves on Luna as her pelvis shifted into a slightly different position. Then her socks pulled themselves up Luna's hind paws.
"Good luck in her fitting into my bra," Sherry muttered. But luck had nothing to do with it...As the bra attached itself to the feline, Luna was filling it, starting to take on a very feminine shape. As for Sherry....her breasts shrank away into her body, leaving only the nipples...until additional nipples started growing beneath them.
She was so focused on watching Luna she didn't notice the collar floating up and attach itself around her neck. She felt a sensation as if she was cracking her neck, but in reality it was her shoulders and neck readjusting themselves.
With Sherry's dress going over Luna's head, Luna was starting to look like a person...if a furry person. Sherry's shoes floated up onto Luna's hind legs, which seemed to have widened to fill them.
Luna was lowered to the ground, where her new feet touched the ground. And Sherry suddenly found herself leaping to the ground, landing perfectly on her feet...all four of them. She looked up at Luna, who seemed to be wandering about the room, seemingly normal despite the changes. She called out to the cat, but only got a meow in return.
"So...I'm a tiny four legged human, but she's a two legged cat...how does that work?" She suddenly realized something....she was going to starve....she couldn't even get the front door open like this. She had to fix it. She couldn't see the screen from her vantage point, so she climbed up Luna's cat tower.
"Design test complete. Commencing download test...awareness parameter noted," the message noted on the screen. And suddenly, the screen dissolved into gibberish.
"Download test complete. Test phase complete. Beginning phased deployment. Please stand by," a female voice said.
Sherry followed the voice to its source. "Who..." she started. But it came out as a meow.
Luna, a much more purposeful look in her eyes, sat down in front of the computer. "Must be running some sort of diagnostic test..." She said. She minimized the program. "Guess it is a good time to get a drink."